Wedding Day, Every Day...

Today is a big day, my wife’s company is putting on their biggest event of the year; All That Glows. For the past couple years, she has worked at the Bengtson Center I have had the pleasure watching her do what she does best, experiential marketing.

Anything you have watched me pull off in the physical or experiential space is due to watching her work. She has a knack for knowing what people want to see in a physical space, understanding how many people can walk through a space with it feeling busy but not feeling tight or “crowded,” and most importantly she can nail surprise and delight.

Every person that gets to go tonight will leave loving the event, having a better connection to the brand, and moving them through to conversion. This is what brands want to do, this is what brands aim to do, this is what brands rarely get to do. Tonight, my wife will get to do it all again and she will make it look effortless – which is an absolute lie.

It is a lie because nobody does it alone, or at least not for long. You simply cannot scale in this new marketing world by yourself because it only takes one thing to go wrong and the process breaks. My wife has spent her career building relationships and networking so that she can create events like this as if it took an hour, but it took a lifetime. It takes a lifetime of coffee meetings, dinner conversations, networking events, chance meetings, or shared daycare to create a community that can create magic.

This is what she excels at, creating magic from community and tonight is another example of that. Event management is one of the hardest tentacles of the marketing universe because of the number of variables one must balance to make the day seem like nothing went wrong when likely everything went wrong because it often does. Honestly, it is one of the top reasons I left radio because I simply could not do another concert. The stress of pulling it off with the appearance of being effortless along with the little to no payoff for the bottom line of the station, growth of the brand, or increase to my own bottom line seemed like insanity to me.

This is why I have the utmost respect for anyone who chooses to do events for a living and much more respect for people like my wife who can pull it off by being kind, selfless, and generous during the entire process.

I am excited to see what tonight holds because for as close as I am to this project, I have no idea what she and her team has in store – which is a wonderful place to be.